Today I learned... about ITSM and pharmacy

Not long ago, the IT department in an institution held all the power. In an era of emerging technology, users were at the mercy of the whims of people who controlled the business IT infrastructure. When there was a change process, IT did not consult with departments; they just went ahead and made changes. Now, with increased user awareness and technical competence, along with a greater presence of competing outsourcers, there is an greater focus on IT as a service. The concept of aligning your IT department and the services it provides to users' businesses became known as Information Technology Service Management (ITSM).

Some hospitals are lucky enough to have a robust native IT department. However, that IT department faces outside competition from vendors with polished presentations who offer to do more for less. As such, the IT department has to articulate its IT services as a value-adding product and make the enticing proposition to their users.

A comparision between "traditional IT" vs. ITSM:

How does this relate to pharmacy? One of the important skills in ITSM is being able to connect or map systems to its respective service. For example, things like SQL databases, custom coding, and servers are systems; the service may be the Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE).

IT pharmacists are well equipped to fill the role of an analyst as they understand the granularity of the technical "magic" behind each clinical service.  

If the above were areas of knowledge, pharmacists ideally overlay the gap between hardcore technical programmers and the "super users." Super users have a very good working knowledge of a system, but they are not concerned with the technical details behind it. Generally, these are the people in the department that are really good with the workflow.

In the ITSM process, the analyst (ie. IT pharmacist) would work closely with the developers and help translate the technology into meaningful clinical features. If there was a new feature request, the analyst would assess the clinical requirements from the user, and translate them into technical concepts for the development team. The analyst would be heavily involved in the change management process. In doing so, the analyst would utilize best practice models and make sure changes made to the system are aligned with the hospital's high level objectives and integrated properly with all the other software.

It is hard to tell where pharmacy informatics lies nationally. As current state, I am guessing a majority of IT pharmacists may find themselves in the "super user" group. With HIT ramping up, it may be prudent for IT pharmacists to move closer to the technology department and view their services from an ITSM perspective.